Northern Light
Epiphany
Sunday/Second Sunday of Christmas
January
3, 2010
Let us pray: O God, you call us to see with eyes of justice and hear with our ears attuned to stories of love for each other, for creation and for you. May these words be ones which help us in that quest. Amen.
As you probably know, one of the responsibilities I have in my term as President of Conference is to write a column for the Alberta and Northwest Conference insert in the United Church Observer which comes out in every other edition of the Observer. When I was first approached with information about this duty I was asked what I would like to call the column. In the past it was called President's Pen - a moniker that seemed a bit pass ้ given that I have written little more than a few words with a pen in more than two decades. Given that I am the first person in this position to be living north of the 60 th parallel I thought it might be interesting to give that some recognition. So I came up with the name which also gives title to this reflection this morning Northern Light. I did so with a bit of anxiety not wanting to appear that I was the source of any great insight but rather to let our context here in the Northwest Territories guide what I might have to share in the column.
Today is a day in the church year which presents a number of possibilities. It is actually the second Sunday of Christmas the tenth day of Christmas, but I imagine since the commercial forces have successfully replaced the twelve days of Christmas beginning on December 25 with about fifty-five days of Christmas ending around five pm on Christmas Eve that you have probably grown tired of the Christmas carols. By the time we arrive at next Sunday the Christian season of Christmas will be over, and we will be in the season of Epiphany the season of insight and light. You may know that Epiphany actually occurs on January 6 so we will miss it in worship occurring as it does in the middle of the week. Unless we take note of it here on this Sunday which is often the case, given that the successful kidnapping (pun not intended) of Christmas has already taken place.
I mentioned a moment ago the place of context in my decision to choose a new and different name for the president's In Contact column. Throughout my time in seminary some twenty years ago I was continually reminded of the importance of context in developing a theology which is just a fancy way to describe the goal of looking for the presence of God which makes sense and dare I say sheds light on the ways in which God is speaking to a particular group of people at a particular place and time.
Having just come back from some Christmas vacation time in Alberta I am keenly aware of the importance of light or perhaps the lack of it as part of our context here in Yellowknife. It's not so much that I noticed the difference during my nine days away, but it seems that everyone I talked to while in Edmonton and Calgary seemed to be quite interested in how much sunlight we don't have at this time of year. And in answering the questions we seem to come up with all kinds of rationalisations and explanations to describe how it isn't so bad. Things like it's not that much different than Alberta you go to work in the dark and come home in the dark or yeah, but the days are getting longer now since the solstice on December 21 seem to be the standard ways we have of saying that the dark is okay it doesn't stay dark and we are people of hope after all. We also justify the darkness with wonderful descriptions of how lovely the light is by the time we get to March and how fantastic it is to have constant light with only a bit of twilight in the days surrounding the summer solstice.
The fact is that light is nice both physically and metaphorically. But we are people defined by our context and the call from God is always to find new insight, to turn conventions upside down, to engage in last being first kinds of thinking the same thing that Jesus did with his parables and his actions calling upon people to use the other side of their brain and see how God's way is not necessarily the way of the world, in fact God's way is usually not the way of the world.
I try to use the same principles in my life and work. What new and special insight is God asking us to consider in any situation. What ways will lift up the downtrodden, the unconsidered, the forgotten whether it be fellow humans or any other part of this mysterious and wonderful creation in which we live whether it be the microcosm of the uniqueness of a snowflake under the lens of a microscope or the vastness of a clear night look into the cosmos from our little spot on this planet spinning in the shadow of our sun in the Milky Way galaxy.
I also try to appreciate the same thing from others. So, in my November article I wrote about Brian Wren - a fantastic hymn writer who weaves lovely new considerations of God and God's way with his well crafted and beautiful word imagery and who no doubt would have been featured at last week's Wassail service if I had been here to make one of the hymn requests. It's almost as if Brian has spent time north of sixty to be able to write words like this: Joyful is the dark calling to mind the ways in which light comes to us not just in the physical glow of the sun or a well placed light bulb, but perhaps in a time of quiet contemplation with only candle glow or perhaps no source of light at all. I remember reflecting on this very idea a year or so ago perhaps in my readjustment to the northern cycle of darkness and light and realising that many of our important encounters with God come in the warm cover of darkness whether they be nighttime dreams or tosses and turns in the dark of night as we consider an important decision in our lives, or ponder a vexing issue. I know that there were many times in my former career as a programmer when a logic problem or computer bug was solved as I thought about it trying to get to sleep at night. And as I mentioned in the November column, there are numerous stories in the scriptural record to remind us of the same thing. I think off the top of my head of Jacob's wrestle with God by the Jabbok river and the nighttime voices heard by Samuel when he experienced the call of God in his life. The shepherds were night time recipients of the news of Jesus' birth and the wise ones whose visit we mark on the holy day of Epiphany probably found it easier to travel at night when the light of the star was most visible.
The point of this is this light is a metaphor for new perspective, for new insight, for new understandings all with the goal of revealing God's way in the midst of many ways. God's way is a way of justice inviting us to live lives that are turned to making gentle our bruised world. Bruised from the way we treat each other, bruised from the way we take advantage of creation. But light is not necessarily the presence of physical light. It may in fact be in a time of darkness that we are shown God's way in a particularly revealing dream or reverie.
I did most of the preparation for this worship service in the days leading up to Christmas knowing that I would not be back until last night. As I thought about the theme of Epiphany the season of revelation, the season of light, I began wondering about the people who live even further north. It is amazing to me at this time of year to realize how little the absence of light gets mentioned for example during the noon hour show on CBC radio which comes from Inuvik. We know what it is like to have short days, but I still wonder what it would be like to have no days, at least in the way we define them by the sun coming up and going down. So in those days leading up to Christmas I did a little foray over to timeanddate.com my favourite source of information about sunrise and sunset and any number of other questions about things like the date of Easter and looked up Inuvik. Did you know that the sun comes up in Inuvik for the first time this winter on January 6 Epiphany and stays up for 29 minutes. Now how cool is that! Sometimes the best insight doesn't need any explanation at all! Amen.